Sabriel

[sawyl]

After something undemanding, I settled down with Garth Nix' Sabriel. Although it very much feels like a first novel — there are some infelicities of style characteristic of someone finding their literary feet — it features a strong cast of characters and an intriguing setting.

After a short prologue that introduces the Abhorsen, a necromancer responsible for putting the unquiet dead to rest, and his newborn daughter Sabriel, the action jumps forward 18 years and shifts south to the country of Ancelstierre where Sabriel is at boarding school. Separated from the Old Kingdom by the Wall, Ancelstierre is a pragmatic and technological country rather like Edwardian Britain where magic only works close to the northern border. Fortunately, Sabriel's school is close far north enough for a magical sending to arrive bearing her father's sword and his seven magical bells. Realising that the Abhorsen needs her help, Sabriel leaves school and returns to her homeland to help.

Through the prologue, Nix quickly establishes the role and person of the Abhorsen, in the process suggesting that Sabriel's father has sacrificed a great at the altar of duty, and establishes the book's ultimate antagonist in the form of Kerrigor, a member of the Greater Dead long believed to have been banished far beyond the first gates of death. The school scenes serve a similar purpose for Sabriel establishing her a prefect who excels at her lessons and, thanks to Wyverley's proximity to the Wall, has become skilled with Charter magic.

Following her departure from school and her journey to the Wall, we get to see a bit of northern Ancelstierre with its extensive fortification and emplacements. These combine early 20th century war machines — revolvers, machine guns, tanks, and telephones — with the trappings of earlier, less mechanical ages just in case a wind from the north causes modern technology to fail. The northern guard, in the form of Colonel Horyce, also serve Sabriel up with a deadline: unless she can find her father and renew his wards before the next moon, the dead of the northern battlefields will rise again.

On crossing the border, Sabriel finds herself pursued by a Mordicant, a powerful dead spirit who seems determined to cut her off before she can reach the safety of her father's house. Learning the way to the Abhorsen's house from the spirit of her dead mother, Sabriel embarks on a frantic race to reach the place before the Mordicant has a chance to catch her. At the very end of her strength, she finally arrives at the house only to find her father's helper, a small talking cat called Mogget, waiting for her on the doorstep.

Sabriel's flight through the landscape is nicely done and sets up many of the features of the book including the Charter stones, which represent the way magic has been bound both into the landscape and into a less dangerous form than the free magic used by necromancers. The Mordicant is an impressively implacable opponent, despite its inability to cross running water; it comes close to catching its prey on a number of occasions, pushing Sabriel to the bring collapse, showing a keen instinct for strategy and an ability to direct lower forms of the dead to carry out its bidding.

Unwilling to be confined by the Mordicant and its minions, who seem determined to keep her penned up in her father's house on its island in the middle of the great river, Sabriel acts on Mogget's suggestion and uses a magical paper plane constructed to break free of the siege. The flight does not go smoothly and she and Mogget crash into a hidden lake where they find a young man of Sabriel's age bound in magical suspension, disguised as the figurehead of a wooden burial ship. When the man wakes, with on the sketchiest knowledge of the events which led to his confinement, he agrees to throw in his lot with Sabriel and help her rescue her father from the power that has confined him somewhere in the river of the dead.

In company with the man, a royal guard called Touchstone, Sabriel heads for the capital of the Old Kingdom where she now believes her father may be. Along the way she learns a great deal more about Kerrigor from Touchstone, who turns out to have a convenient link to the events of a few hundred years past, and gradually comes to discover more about the Charter and its foundations in the stones, in the Wall, in the Royal family, in the Abhorsens, and in the Clayr — a group of mystical seers. Even when she finally finds her father, Sabriel still finds that she must bear much of the burden of dealing with Kerrigor and one again sets off in a desperate flight to deal with the rogue spirit before he can destroy the Old Kingdom.

As mentioned the book is problematic and a bit clunky at points, especially during Sabriel's early dealings with the garrison manning the Ancelstierrean side of the Wall. There is also a great deal of emphasis on the Charter and Charter Stones and Charter Sendings and such, with very little show to balance all the telling — and some of the telling is, frustrating, fogged by the characters' inability to talk about it because the magic itself has bound them — something that feels like a bit of a cop-out.

But for despite those caveats, the character are a strong and well drawn — allowing them to survive the occasional moments when their narrative voices intercut in a way that is less than ideal — and likeable. The world-building is excellent and feels consistent, with mythic elements like magical bells, the river of the dead, and the sensitivity of evil to sunlight and running water, integrated into the whole in a way that adds excitement and menace.